Wonder how much of this is down to simple awareness that the game exists, and the role culture (and especially the internet) has had in promoting it?<p>Because in my childhood, I had no idea what Dungeons and Dragons was at all, nor that it even really existed. Hell, the only things I knew about it came from the odd TV show that featured the characters playing it in a random episode (in this case, probably Dexter's Laboratory).<p>And I suspect a lot of people were in that situation. They just never came across it in day to day life, perhaps because the company behind it didn't do much in the way of mainstream advertising.<p>The internet fixed that. Now people can easily come across forum or social media discussions about it, read up on sites and wikis about it and get a general idea what it entails from fiction based around it. Which is pretty common with webcomics now, since many use Dungeons and Dragons esque rulesets for their worlds, or apply them to other media (see the Order for the Stick for an example of the first, and DM of the Rings and Darths & Droids for examples of the latter).<p>TV Tropes may have had an effect too. Loads of tropes there are based on concepts from Dungeons and Dragons (like the alignment system), and works based on it are extremely popular on the site.<p>Oh, and to a lesser degree, it got more respect due to 'geek culture' going mainstream too. I suspect among those who had heard of it (especially in the US) people either assumed it was something only geeks/nerds/whatever would play or (if they were of the Jack Chick esque moral panic persuasion), the work of the devil.<p>This has obviously turned around a bit, especially when actors and other celebrities have mentioned playing the game (and other tabletop RPGs) online.